September 30, 2014

Oh No We Didn't Underestimate The threat

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides accurate geostrategic forecasts and advanced warning of growing threats. ISW analysts have accurately forecasted the political fragmentation of Iraq and the return of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), now the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), since 2011. ISW analysts have correctly predicted the origins, pathways, methods, and aims of ISIS’s return.

ISW conducts strategic forecasting as a core intellectual contribution to foreign policy. ISW’s leaders believe that strategic surprise can be averted by monitoring the trajectories of complex problems over time, even from unclassified information. Over the last 18 months, ISW has published a number of forecasts that anticipated the resurgence of AQI, the devolution of the Iraqi Security Forces, and the emergence of the ISIS campaign to control territory inside Iraq and Syria. This document is a compilation of forecasts made by ISW’s analysts that have come true. Strategic forecasting does not presume that complex situations will always unfold as predicted. ISW strives to apply concrete knowledge of the present in order to deliver insight about the future. ISW hopes that this policy makers can use these insights in order to take a proactive rather than a reactive posture to emerging crisis situations and prevent their escalation.Except that the guy doing the firing was also the one who directed him to say a lot of stupid stuff. I mean canning Clapper without Canning his boss is just, you know, pissing into the wind.